Safety With an Open Heart

Do you live your life with your heart mostly open or mostly closed? Do you spend most of your time protecting against rejection or being taken advantage of, or most of your time open to sharing love with others?

As children, many people had very heartbreaking experiences that caused them to close their heart. What experiences led to you closing your heart?

Various forms of physical and/or sexual abuse

Various forms of emotional abuse, such as criticism, judgment, blame, ridicule, or sarcasm

Being neglected, ignored, discounted, unseen

Being engulfed and smothered by a parent – pulled on and used to fill up their emptiness

Rejection by parents, siblings, and/or peers

Loss of a parent through divorce or death

Loss of a beloved sibling, friend, or relative

Physical defects that created limitation

As children, when you experienced any of these and other very challenging situations, and there was no one there to lovingly help you through the pain, the heartbreak may have been too intense for you to manage and you might have closed your heart to survive. You may have learned to be in your head rather than your heart.

However, now, as adults, keeping your heart closed has many negative consequences. While it was necessary for your survival as a child, now it is causing you a lot of pain. As adults, we all need to learn to lovingly manage our heartbreak without closing down.

What Happens Now When You Keep Your Heart Closed?

I feel alone and empty inside

I can’t feel connected with others

I turn to various addictions – food, drugs, alcohol, TV, sex, talking, anger, blame, and so on, to fill my emptiness and take away my aloneness

My relationships are unsatisfying

Life is not fun

I feel anxious and/or depressed

I get sick a lot

These are just a few of the many negative consequences of keeping your heart closed.

Are you afraid to open your heart? Are you afraid of being hurt and rejected, controlled and used? Are you afraid that if you open your heart you will not be able to manage the heartache, heartbreak, loneliness, sadness, and sorrow of life?

How Can You Keep Your Heart Open And Still Feel Safe?

You will start to feel safe when you learn to take emotional responsibility – responsibility for your own feelings. As a child, your body was too small to handle the big feelings of heartbreak and loneliness without the help of a loving adult. Today, your body is big enough to handle these feelings, but you still need the help of a loving adult. The difference is that now the loving adult needs to be you. You need to learn to be the loving adult capable of managing the painful feelings of life so that you don’t need to close your heart and turn to addictions.

The loving adult is who we are when we are connected with a powerful source of spiritual guidance. When we are not connected with our Source, we are operating from our programmed mind – our wounded self. Our wounded self, coming from many fears and false beliefs, is not capable of handling the painful feelings of life. This is the part of you that closes your heart to protect against pain, yet is now causing much of your pain.

When you move out of the intent to protect against pain and into the intent to learn about loving yourself and others, then you move out of your programmed mind and into your connection with a spiritual source of love and wisdom. When you choose the intent to learn rather than the intent to protect, your heart naturally opens. It is your intent to protect against pain with various forms of controlling behavior that keeps your heart closed.

Today, choose the intent to learn about loving yourself and others and notice how you feel.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books, relationship expert, and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding® healing process. Are you are ready to discover real love and intimacy? Learn Inner Bonding now! Click here for a FREE Inner Bonding Course, and visit our website at www.innerbonding.com for more articles and help. Phone Sessions Available. Join the thousands we have already helped and visit us now!

About The Author

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is a best-selling author of 8 books and co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding healing process. Dr. Margaret Paul is the author/co-author of numerous best-selling books, including: Do I Have To Give Up Me to Be Loved By You?, Do I Have To Give Up Me to Be Loved By My Kids?, and Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By God? Margaret holds a Ph.D. in psychology and is a relationship expert, public speaker, seminar leader, consultant, facilitator, and artist. She has appeared on many radio and TV shows, including the Oprah show. She has successfully worked with thousands of individuals, couples and business relationships and taught classes and seminars for over 42 years. Dr. Paul’s books have been distributed around the world and have been translated into many languages. After practicing traditional psychotherapy for 17 years, Margaret was discouraged by the results – both for her clients and herself. She had spent years trying to heal from her own dysfunctional and abusive background, but found herself still suffering with anxiety and relationship problems. She started to seek a process that works fast, deep, creates permanent change, loving relationships, inner peace, and joy. In 1984, she met and became friends with Dr. Erika Chopich, who had half the Inner Bonding® process, and Margaret had the other half! They have been evolving this incredibly powerful healing process for the last 26 years. Margaret works with individuals and couples throughout the world – on the phone, in workshops and 5-Day Intensives, and with members of Inner Bonding Village at innerbonding.com. She is able to access spiritual Guidance during her sessions, which enables her to work with people wherever they are in the world. Dr. Margaret has just completed a 12 year project call SelfQuest®, which is a transformational self-healing/conflict resolution software program. SelfQuest® is being donated to prisons and schools and sold to individuals, families, and businesses. You can read about SelfQuest® and see a short video of it at selfquest.com. In her spare time, Margaret loves to paint, make pottery, take photos, watch birds, read, ride and play with her horses, and spend time with her children and grandchildren.